You can also watch here the video of Romney telling the media that yeah, he said it, and he’s not exactly sorry that he said it either. But never mind that right now; the question before the board is, why on earth did Obama for America not show the video to its email subscribers? Why didn’t they even link to it, if it was so horrible? – And before you wonder: go to their donation page link, and it won’t show up there, either.

The answer? …Well, you just watched the video yourself, so you know the answer: the video is only horrible to Democratic base voters. Show it to an undecided swing voter, and there’s far too high a chance that he or she will pretty much agree with the sentiment. Which is something that Mitt Romney knows very well, which is why he smilingly encouraged the people who published the clip to publish the whole video. And it’s also something that Jim Messina knows very well; which is why he deliberately didn’t make the video easy to see and held off on the usual begging for five bucks that stereotypically infests Obama campaign ads. Bottom line: Obama for America is not going to use this incident to get more swing voters, although they certainly won’t mind if that happens (it won’t). What they’re apparently going to use this incident for is to shore up their own base.

And that is… interesting. Not surprising, if you were aware that Gallup is showing a drastic reversal in voter enthusiasm since 2008. Or that Pew is showing that the Democrats took a nosedive in 2010 when it came to political party identification and haven’t recovered since. Or even that it’s almost October and nobody’s seriously talking about the possible coattails of an Obama victory. Or even talking about it at all…